Supreme Court ruling clears path for foreign aid payments

The Supreme Court has declined to block a lower court order requiring the Trump administration to pay $2 billion in foreign assistance that had been held up by a funding freeze.

In a 5-4 ruling, the court ordered the federal district judge overseeing the case to “clarify what obligations the government must fulfill to ensure compliance with the temporary restraining order, with due regard for the feasibility of any compliance timelines.”

The administration had asked the high court to vacate the TRO issued by U.S. District Judge Amir Ali, arguing in a filing that the order “to pay all pending requests under foreign-aid instruments on a timeline of the district court’s choosing — without regard to whether the requests are legitimate, or even due yet — intrudes on the president’s broad foreign-affairs powers and upends the systems the Executive Branch has established to disburse aid.”

Two manufacturers of life-saving malnutrition products told Agri-Pulse via text on Tuesday that they had still not been paid for products delivered since December. Elon Musk said Sunday that one of the manufacturers, Rhode Island-based Edesia Nutrition, would receive payment this week.

Edesia founder and CEO Navyn Salem told Agri-Pulse Tuesday that the nonprofit had not seen payment and did not expect to for a couple of weeks at least. David Todd, co-founder and COO of Mana Nutrition, another ready-to-use therapeutic foods manufacturer, said that he hopes his nonprofit would also receive payments soon. 

USAID owes Mana more than $10 million for products provided to the government, according to Mark Moore, Mana’s co-founder and CEO.

On Feb. 25, Ali had ordered the government “to issue payments for a portion of the paused disbursements — those owed for work already completed before” the order was issued.

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Dissenting Justice Samuel Alito pronounced himself “stunned” by the decision. In a dissent, he asked, “Does a single district-court judge who likely lacks jurisdiction have the unchecked power to compel the government of the United States to pay out (and probably lose forever) 2 billion taxpayer dollars? The answer to that question should be an emphatic ‘No,’ but a majority of this court apparently thinks otherwise.”

Alito was joined by Justices Brett Kavanaugh, Clarence Thomas, and Neil Gorsuch.

The dissenters said the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals should have taken up the appeal. That court declined to do so because a TRO is not appealable, but they said “it is clear that the district court’s enforcement order should be construed as an appealable preliminary injunction, not a mere TRO.”

“The Court of Appeals had jurisdiction to consider the government’s appeal, and we have jurisdiction to review and summarily vacate that court’s erroneous judgment,” they wrote.

They also said the administration “has shown a likelihood of success on the merits of its argument that sovereign immunity deprived the district court of jurisdiction to enter its enforcement order.”

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